


Steady

by EntreNous



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Chosen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-09
Updated: 2008-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EntreNous/pseuds/EntreNous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Xander goes wherever the Council tells him to.  Then Oz is downstairs, and needs somewhere to crash for the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steady

**Author's Note:**

> For the [maleslashminis](http://maleslashminis.livejournal.com/profile) Xander round, and a request of Oz/Xander, and "post-chosen, guitar theft, banter".

Xander stumbled through the bedroom door and into the living room, staggering to the right after nearly tripping over his sneakers then swaying to the left to avoid planting his face against the wall. He had his hand out, reaching, before he realized he was stumbling _towards_ something: the phone ringing way too insistently for whatever o'clock in the morning it had to be.

"Yeah?" he managed into the speaker.

"Xander. Hey."

He stood and blinked a few times as he processed that, seeing hazy outlines of furniture emerge in the near-dark as his eyes adjusted. There weren't so many male voices he knew from two words alone, but this was one of them. "Oz?"

"That'd be me."

"How come we're talking on the phone?"

"Oh, you know, I dialed the numbers, you picked up. It's this whole exciting trend of modern technology."

There was a long pause.

"Huh?"

"Willow gave me your number."

"Willow," Xander repeated. His eyes had that weird itchy burning feel to them, like they got when he hadn't slept in a night or two. He rubbed first at one then at the other with the heel of his left palm. "Willow is in Malaysia."

"Thailand, before that."

"So you're in Thailand."

"Not so much now."

Xander took a deep breath. "You know, I bet all of this would probably make a lot more sense if I had a cup of coffee in my hand, or maybe just more than a couple of hours of sleep under my belt, but leaving aside you meeting up with old girlfriends and jetting around to exotic hot spots, how come we're talking on the phone _now_?"

"Oh, sure. Thing is, I'm downstairs. Can I crash at your place for the night?"

Xander resisted the urge to peer out the window to see if he could spot a blue-haired guy standing on the corner. He also managed to bite back an overlong explanation of how this wasn't his place at all, more like an in-between place for various people who did this or that for the Council, a resting place for people waiting to find out where they were supposed to be next.

"Yeah," he said finally. "Come on up."

 

 

***~*~***

 

 

"Why is there a werewolf asleep on my sofa?"

Willow made an incoherent sleepy noise, and Xander pictured her in the footie pajamas she'd worn to slumber parties at her house when they were seven.

"Is this a riddle?" she asked in her lilting voice. "Oh, no, wait -- you mean Oz, don't you?"

"He showed up in the middle of the night." He paused. "You were in Thailand?"

"There was a demon summoning," she said almost apologetically. Then, "You know, the Council wants to focus more with finding and working with individual werewolves."

"That's why Oz came up looking all bleary and muttering something about a guy stealing his guitar?"

"Well, bleary, that I'm not sure about, but gosh, someone stole his guitar? That's terrible. Those can be really expensive. He didn't say anything at all about that when I saw him in Chiang Mai."

"Willow. Stay focused, here. Speaking of which, why do you sound like I woke you up? Isn't it like mid-afternoon where you are? Unless you're in some other hemisphere now, in which case, thanks so much for keeping me in the loop of your whereabouts, and if that's not it, then you've obviously having way more fun where you are then I am where . . . I am." He squinted around him before remembering where exactly he was.

"Some of us take naps as adults," she said in a defensive tone. "It improves mental acuity. It has nothing to do with being up late, or going to wild parties."

"They have some good looking women in Malaysia, don't they?"

"They really do," she confided.

"Okay, so Oz is on my couch here in . . . Chicago, for a werewolf-outreach-initiative? And you're in Malaysia partying down."

"Mostly. But also, I thought it could be time for you to have a partner. You know, to work with."

"You're only saying that because you and Buffy have been gossiping about how my customarily lightning-quick responses have gotten less than lickity split."

"Well, we don't want a cabal of Orcus-worshippers to tie you to a stone circle in Newfoundland again, no."

"Giles said I wouldn't have to go back to Newfoundland," Xander said in distraction.

"Xander, we're most of us working in groups or pairs now. Oz is sort of between things -- things like gigs," she supplied helpfully. "And you could use back-up if you're going to keep going on new slayer-finding missions."

"Which I am going to keep doing, all narrow escapes from sacrificial rites aside."

"Okay then. But hey, maybe it would ease my mind -- or ease Buffy's mind -- to know you're part of a team."

"There you go, hitting my secret weakness of mind-easing," he grumbled.

"Xander, it's great to hear your voice. But how come you didn't just ask Oz when he got there?"

"He fell asleep while I was finding him a mug for cocoa."

"Awww!"

"Aww," he agreed. "It's a little weird, though, you have to admit, me starting to work with a guy I haven't seen in years, especially with him showing up out of nowhere."

"So you'll do it?" she asked.

"I'll talk to him in the morning."

 

 

***~*~***

 

 

When morning came, Xander found Oz on the living room couch, shoes off but regular clothes still on, lying on top of the blanket Xander had scrounged up the night before. Now that it was daylight and not in the middle of sleep-rousing, Xander took the time to note that Oz's hair was not, in fact, blue; it was a funky rust color that looked oddly good against the brown cotton coverlet under him.

Xander took a shower, checked his email, and ran the spell-check on his latest report to Giles before zipping it off. But Oz still didn't stir, not when Xander cursed as he spilled coffee grounds, or when Xander's cell phone went off. He looked sort of peaceful, which Xander thought was a good thing, seeing as he must have really needed the rest to doze through all that bumbling around.

After three cups of coffee, Xander thought maybe it was not at all a good thing, Oz was stretched out without so much as a single tell-tale twitch responding to Xander's clattering. Willow had said Oz was between things, but what if that were code for _Oz is in some serious heart-stopping breath-taking health trouble_? What if there was something really wrong, and now he was in a coma-like state on Xander's temporary Chicago couch?

He crept closer to see if Oz was breathing. Then, as a last resort when he debated whether that seeming slight motion of Oz's chest was really _breathing_ or just himself jittering back and forth slightly from too much caffeine, he laid his head on Oz's chest to check for a heart beat.

When he heard the steady _thump-thump_ , he sighed in relief. Then he listened some more. Oz wasn't responding to a head on his chest anyhow, and it was sort of soothing. Xander yawned. He really hadn't gotten enough sleep last night.

Figured Oz would have such a steady beat going on in his chest, he reflected as he splayed a hand against Oz's chest to anchor himself. Maybe all musicians had that kind of thing, a solid sounding of background rhythm inside to measure and balance the songs they played.

Xander's heartbeat didn't feel that way to him, even if he'd never gotten a warning from a yearly medical check-up. It usually seemed to thrum against his chest in an agitated _brumm-brumm-brumm_ whenever he talked too much or saw someone he thought was hot or was about to get kidnapped by some or other bunch of occult misfits.

At least at the moment his skittering heartbeat could have been from all the coffee rather than anything else. Still, it probably explained why he'd been so crap at the flügelhorn back in middle school.

Suddenly he was aware of fingers combing through his hair.

"Oz?"

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

"This is interesting," Oz remarked at last.

Since he had no ready excuses for why he planted the side of his head against Oz's chest, Xander blurted out, "Where did you get your guitar stolen?"

"Seoul."

"What's up with all the Asia traveling?"

"You've never been?"

"Not yet."

"It's pretty cool. I like Korea. And I dig Japan a lot."

"Probably beats Canada."

"Now, Canada is all right. They have a good music scene in Toronto. Montreal, too. And good bagels, for some reason."

Oz was still carding fingers through Xander's hair, and it occurred to Xander he should probably object or at least get up too quickly and say something stupid. But the contact felt too nice to raise a stink about, so he kept quiet.

"Willow said she wants us to be partners."

"Huh."

At that Xander raised his head. "She didn't tell you that?"

"No, she told me." Oz regarded him calmly.

"Oh. Because the way you said, 'huh', it kind of sounded like you hadn't heard, and really I wouldn't be surprised, what with Willow sending you this way without so much as a courtesy shout-out to me first, that you had no idea at all that Willow was scheming to pair us up and send us back into the wilds of Newfoundland."

Oz slid up a little, so that he was propped against the couch cushion, and laced his fingers behind his head. "That's a lot to get out of a 'huh'."

"I'm good at interpolation," Xander replied. He sat back on his heels and cleared his throat.

"Well, the 'huh' was more of a reaction to you maybe not liking the partners idea."

"I like it fine. It's just a little sudden. I didn't even know you and Willow were in touch, never mind her hiring you and sending you off to Chicago and making the Council start all kinds of werewolf befriending projects."

"Some of these new slayers, they're happening across werewolves here and there, before the Council even identifies them," Oz commented. "So it's kind of like, take the normal slayer reaction to string up a werewolf by his thumbs --"

"Buffy never reacted that way," Xander immediately interrupted.

"Buffy is Buffy," Oz said. "Anyway, take that and put in these kids having no idea what they really are capable of, and you're talking about some real damage to the werewolves crossing their paths. I ran across Andrew in Itaewon -- that was the show where someone took my Vox Mark VI. That kind of thing gets you thinking, losing a guitar like that. So Andrew told me Willow wasn't too far off, and he had this whole speech about the noble lone werewolf coming to amity with the new Council." Oz paused. "That guy likes to talk."

"So we'd be trying to locate, intercept werewolves before the problem begins sort of thing?"

Oz tilted his head to the side. "What were you doing before now?"

Xander took a deep breath. "Going wherever they sent me."

"I think this would be better."

Xander leaned his folded arms against the couch and rested his chin on them. It seemed sudden and odd, Willow or Andrew or someone else in the Council Xander hadn't been introduced to yet, scheming to pair off him and Oz and making them werewolf-locating specialists.

But it was less random than him staying in apartments for a couple of days in different unfamiliar cities before getting packed off to whatever new spot a possible slayer had been spotted. "Yeah."

 

 

***~*~***

 

 

They had been on the road together for two months when Xander, in the middle of his spiel about why the werewolf they'd just tracked down should register with the Council and get recognized protection, realized that he had paused to let Oz talk before Oz had opened his mouth.

There were other moments like that too, he thought in distraction as they navigated the streets of Brussels looking for good waffles. When they packed to go to their next destination, Oz handed the things Xander was going to put in the suitcase to him without being asked. When they took conference calls with Willow and Buffy or Giles and Andrew, they traded skeptical looks or amused reactions on cue. Well, Xander's amused wide-eyed snigger-repressing reactions, and Oz's hints of amusement. It amounted to the same thing, really. And Oz was great to talk to, even if Xander racked up more talking points proportionally.

After finding and consuming some spectacular waffles, Xander said, "Bar or hotel?"

"Hotel bar," Oz offered by way of compromise, and they trudged off to get a drink together.

Later that night, Xander found he was hesitating after brushing his teeth, hovering by the sink instead of waltzing back into the room to find local television to gawp at like they always did. But though his mind felt like it was racing to connect different incidents and moments, he couldn't think of a specific thing to ask or say.

He finished up and went to flop down on the double-bed he'd claimed, deliberately not looking at Oz sprawled back on the bed on the other side of the night-stand.

"Remember that morning when you woke up in Chicago?" he asked during a break in a program featuring Dutch-speaking cartoon puppies. "The first morning?"

Oz kept his eyes on the screen. "Yeah."

Xander gave a nervous laugh. "And I was listening to see if you were alive?"

"Was that what you were doing?" Oz shifted slightly, gazing evenly at Xander.

"You never brought it up. You didn't wonder why I had my head on your chest."

"Not really."

"Okay. That's -- it didn't seem strange?"

Oz shrugged. "Much stranger things have happened to me."

Xander sat up, cross-legged. In his head he could hear the steady beat of Oz's heart even though they were nowhere near that close at the moment. "You know how I take my coffee."

Shrug. "It's not that complicated."

"Yeah, but -- maybe Anya knew that about me, towards the end, but no one else before or since. And you know all kinds of stuff like that about me."

"We're pretty much always together," Oz said, as if that explained it all.

Xander nodded slowly. Maybe it did explain it all.

But when he thought of that early morning with Oz stroking his hair, and of the bunches of mornings since then with familiar signals and comfortable habits, there seemed like there was a connection he wasn't making. He could feel his heart speeding up while he frowned, a _brumm-brumm-brumm_ inside his chest. "No, there's something, and I'm just not getting it."

Oz raised an eyebrow.

Xander shook his head and leaned against the headboard, though the support didn't do a bit of good for getting the situation into recognizable form in his brain. "You remember that time in Health class -- my senior year and your repeat-senior year -- when I couldn't get my final project right for the presentation, and I went into hysterical girly giggles in front of everyone when it was my time to talk?"

Oz made a humming sound. "If I remember right, there were dioramas involved."

" _Yes_. Dioramas, the bane of my existence since second grade. Wait, no. Back on track. See, I'm feeling kind of close to that now, with the not understanding what I'm talking about here, and the feeling that a bunch of things depend on me getting it right but just knowing I'm going to get it completely wrong, so if you could --"

Oz had joined him on the bed before he finished speaking, winding his fingers in Xander's hair and pulling him down for a lingering kiss.

"Oh," Xander said against Oz's soft lips. "Oh. Yeah. That. That's it."

"I thought it might be." Oz gave him a half-smile, and tugged Xander forward once more.

 

 

***~* the end *~***


End file.
